A Life in Scenes
by marianne in chains
Summary: Draco Malfoy grows up.


Ughhh, this took forever to write, and it's really a silly thing. But here it is.

-

Draco Malfoy is a man long before any of his playmates, forced into the suits and manners of adults when his Hogwarts peers are still fighting in their backyards and staining their shirts with ice cream. At eleven he knows that school is anything but a place for learning and growing, and enjoying yourself. There are connections to be made, alliances to be forged. Draco understands this.

It's just that, underneath the self-restraint and etiquette and cold sense of superiority and entitlement bred and beaten into him, Draco is only eleven, and his mother's side of the family has become famous more for its lunatics than anything else. Not only is he eleven, but he is used to getting what he wants, from everyone except his family. So when Harry Potter refuses his hand, well, Draco is only eleven and he is absolutely furious.

Deep down Draco knows he's above picking fights with the Potter boy, that while his friendship would have been invaluable, and how often has he heard that, acting the spoiled brat is doing him no favors. On the other hand, Potter and his little Gryffindor friends are no better, goading Draco and allowing themselves to be goaded. They spend the year slinging insults and sneering at each other. Harry Potter saves the day, and Hermione Granger is the top student in there year. Word of the feud gets around. Draco's father hears of it.

-

The summer between his first and second years at Hogwarts is a time he doesn't speak of.

-

His second year starts of worse than the first, in Flourish and Blott's he gives in and mocks the Weasley girl, nothing his father wouldn't have said, but as Lucius reminds him, only one of them is protected by a great deal of power and influence. He heads back to school, properly chastised, only to break his vow of non-involvement almost immediately, because Harry Potter apparently spends his summers thinking of new ways to be completely insufferable. (Not, of course, that Draco will ever voice any of this to his father, but Crabbe and Goyle and Pansy hear so much about it that they can practically recite, verbatim, any number of Draco's rants on command.)

It carries on like this until the first attack. The identity of Slytherin's Heir becomes the new topic on the infamous Hogwarts gossip train, and even Draco and Harry let their feud take a back seat. Draco is a bright boy, though, and he remembers his father's sleight of hand from the beginning of the year well. So even if he isn't Slytherin's Heir, which he's known since the messages started appearing—the Malfoys would never keep quiet about a connection like that—his family is clearly responsible for his return, and Draco makes sure that his fellow Slytherins understand that, though not in so many words. He lounges around the common room and makes grand predictions, talks about the glory of the Dark Lord and his followers, and the others start to listen.

Of course the whole thing goes to hell when Potter somehow kills the Basilisk, rescues the Weasley girl, and implicates his father in front of the Headmaster. Thankfully, it's the end of the year, so Draco doesn't have to face the rest of Slytherin House, but it's also the end of the year, and he's going back to his father's house.

-

At the very least, the fact that Mudblood Hermione Granger has bested him once again pales next to the shame of losing the family house elf to Harry Potter.

-

There's nothing special about third or fourth year, except that Potter, of course, manages to be chosen as a Triwizard Champion despite being underage and there already being a Hogwarts Champion. It seems to aggravate even Weasley, so Draco has even less of a problem with mocking Potter and throwing his weight, and therefore much of Slytherin's, behind Cedric Diggory.

-

But that summer Lord Voldemort is back with a vengeance, and Lucius is all too ready to promise his son as a sign of his loyalty. When Draco first meets the Dark Lord his mouth goes dry and his heart forgets to beat, since he has been forged in a strange and whimsical fire, nothing like the unrelenting darkness of his father's youth. They are only in the same room for a matter of minutes, but the Dark Lord's slitted eyes bore into Draco's essence and leave him cold and afraid, though he'd never admit it.

Back at school he joins the crowd in mocking Harry for stating the truths that Draco has seen firsthand, ingratiates himself with a loathsome woman who would certainly survive no purges, and waits for an order. No orders come and he breaths easy, until a letter arrives from Narcissa, written in her customary green ink and steady, if thin hand.

It is hand addressed, which makes his heart stop; Narcissa never addresses envelopes herself, and he pockets the letter before Pansy can notice he's received one. The news is unexpected, to say the least, and Draco skips classes that day, unwilling to face his fellow Slytherins, let alone the rest of Hogwarts. He needs time to compose himself; soon the news will be all over wizarding society, and in his father's place he will have to answer questions. That Draco can handle. He has been groomed for it since birth, practically, schooled in the art of composure and evasion as much as he was taught to levitate feathers or brew Sleeping Draughts.

And he does well, too, outside of Hogwarts's walls he perfects the icy grace of the Malfoys and the Blacks; even Narcissa does not complain, and his mad aunt Bellatrix pinches he cheek and laughs. Narcissa later tells him that Bellatrix approved of his behavior.

Bellatrix's approval apparently brokers more respect than he knew, because just a few weeks later Narcissa comes into his room. She never comes into his room now that he's grown, and actually, never did even when he was a colic ridden baby, but she is pale and drawn and unnaturally tall, and her makeup is nonexistent. Draco almost doesn't recognize her, even more so when she begins to speak and in her voice there is a tremble, something proud but also petrified with fear.

"The Dark Lord has expressed an interest in you, Draco. I expect you to make your father and me proud." She says nothing more, and swans out of the room, calmer than before.

Draco stays still, frozen on his bed where he had been reading, and tries to remember how to breathe. This is what he was born for, he knows, this is the honor and glory his parents have been training him for his entire life, but all he feels is a sick fear. The Dark Lord is great, and powerful, and monstrous.

He rises and walks to the window, presses his face against it and closes his eyes against a slow flood of tears.

Two hours later a house elf knocks on his door and he follows her out. Downstairs Narcissa waits, and wordlessly they Apparate.

-

The Dark Lord only calls him the young Malfoy or Lucius's son, which makes the sick fear clawing up his throat and pouring out of his nose and mouth that much more embarrassing. Of course, he's also Narcissa's son, so he stands up a bit straighter and nods and the appropriate times, and when the Dark Lord dismisses him he bows flawlessly.

Back at the Manor Draco locks himself in a bathroom and vomits until nothing of him is left. His hands shake so badly that when he reaches to wipe his mouth he only smears rancid spit across his face and has to charm it clean.

-

For the first time in his life, Harry Potter is not the center of his attention when he returns to Hogwarts. The idea of the vanishing cabinets is brilliant, he admits to himself, but the work required is incredible. Vanishing cabinets don't take kindly to being spelled, even if the intent is to repair them, and Draco's taken to wearing suits under his robes so no one can see the damage the cabinet's left.

Of course, Potter would decide now, of all times, to give Draco the attention he has been worthy of for years. He lurks everywhere, but as far as Draco can tell he hasn't figured out the plan. Typical Potter, really, too caught up in skulking around to use what little matter is between his ears.

Luckily Granger, Mudblood Granger, he reminds himself, is having none of it. As glad as he is for her wll-placed disinterest, every time he sees her he reminds himself that she's a Mudblood; Draco was always a hateful child, and he thinks that maybe if he can stir those old embers he'll stop being afraid.

-

The plan works far better than he had anticipated; Death Eaters flood into the cabinet. His aunt Bellatrix elbows Rabastan in the stomach, he grunts, Draco rolls his eyes. His aunt is dangerous and violent and very, very, gifted, but she's also a lunatic.

He doesn't really remember leading the contingent on their hunt for Dumbledore, but he knows he does, because when they find the Headmaster, Draco is at the front of the pack. Dumbledore looks, more than anything, old. He is tired and withered in some way, his back is more bowed, even if his eyes are still bright.

"I know you're not a killer," Dumbledore tells him and he's right, but Draco can't let him know that, not with a half-dozen of the wizarding world's most wanted at his back.

But he's not a killer, and he can't kill.

-

When it's all over, as over as it can be now that Dumbledore's dead, Draco locks himself in the prefect's bathroom and discovers he can't even cry. Voldemort is going to kill him for failing. He knows this more than he's ever known anything in his life. He failed, and, for once, he is going to be punished.

-

Draco Malfoy is a child, but it is time for him to put away childish things.


End file.
